SALT (Sexual Abuse Listening Therapy) South West

We offer therapeutic listening sessions to both male and female survivors, starting with an Initial Assessment session.  This enables you to come along to a relaxed atmosphere and have a coffee or tea with a member of staff to chat over what you feel you need support with.  This generally takes around an hour and gives both you and us the chance to see if SALT is what you need.  If things are going to proceed this will usually mean agreeing to an initial seven Individual Sessions of work.  There is always the opportunity to phone for a chat when the Helpline is manned and occasionally one-off  'holding' sessions until listeners are available,  if necessary.

Many survivors of sexual abuse struggle to integrate their mental, emotional and physical experience into everyday life as an adult and, as a result can have struggles in many areas.  These areas include, relationships on every level; self-esteem; mental health; parenting, family situations; self-harming behaviours; self-perception and social/educational/workplace struggles, to name a few.

 Often, the temptation that may have been reinforced by others (knowingly or unknowingly), is to believe that you are mad, bad, stupid or attention-seeking, or all of these!  Self punishment and being victimised can become habits that also just reinforce the shattered image of 'self'.  Large doses of fear, anger, confusion and guilt/shame feelings, can cause people to feel out of control especially when those things have been 'buried' for a long time.

Many survivors can also believe that they will always be/feel/think/act the way they do now .  At SALT we believe there is hope for every person to receive healing.  With the right support and a commitment on your part to stay with the process, you will be amazed what you can achieve!  We all have coping mechanisms that we use as we grow up, some healthy and some not so healthy.  Many of the behaviours may be just that - coping mechanisms.  The behaviours aren't the problem, they are just a symptom, and there may be many of them.

The feeling of  'being out of control'  does, of course, link directly back to when the abuse was happening and you really were out of control literally, emotionally, mentally and physically.  Consequently even though you may now be 'grown-up', if the 'out of control' stuff has never been looked at and processed, you will probably still feel or be out of control to some degree, and may at times still feel like that child.  That is the important thing to remember when thinking about how to live with yourself.  Though adult now, the abuse was experienced by a child, not an adult.